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You can read all the online book reviews in the world, but nothing beats real-world conversations between readers, and authors. To help our community grow, we will host our second West Coast edition of the Mediabistro Book Club tonight (October 11th) in Los Angeles.
Follow this link to RSVP for the free party at the Viceroy Santa Monica Hotel. The book club will feature loads of free books, short readings by four authors, and the chance to meet editors from The Los Angeles Review of Books, Slake and GoodReads.
The slate of featured authors includes: Joseph Mattson with The Speed Chronicles, Grace Krilanovich with The Orange Eats Creeps, Richard Grossman with The Animals and Sanjiv Bhattacharya with Secrets & Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy. Read more about the books below…
The Speed Chronicles edited by Joseph Mattson: “Speed: the most demonized–and misunderstood–drug in the land. Deprived of the ingrained romantic mysticism of the opiate or the cosmopolitan chic of cocaine or the mundane tolerance of marijuana, there is no sympathy for this devil.Akashic Books dares to bring forth the first contemporary collection of all new literary short fiction on the drug from an array of today’s most compelling and respected authors. These are no stereotypical tales of tweakers–the element of crime and the bleary-eyed, shaky zombies at dawn are here right alongside heart-wrenching narratives of everyday people, good intentions gone terribly awry, the skewed American Dream going up in flames, and even some accounts of pure joy.”
The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich: “A girl with drug-induced ESP and an eerie connection to Patty Reed (a young member of the Donner Party who credited her survival to her relationship with a hidden wooden doll), searches for her disappeared foster sister along “The Highway That Eats People,” stalked by a conflation of Twin Peaks‘ “Bob” and the Green River Killer, known as Dactyl. With a scathing voice and penetrating delivery, Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps is one of the most ferocious debut novels in memory.”
The Animals by Richard Grossman: “Consisting of 400 poems, this environmental bible is set in a mythical “field” where a shepherd engages in a series of discussions on a wide range of issues, both practical and mystical, with his flock of 200 different creatures ranging from an amoeba to a whale. Additionally, each animal tells its own intimate story in its own unique voice to the assembled group.”
Secrets & Wives by Sanjiv Bhattacharya: “Bhattacharya gains unprecedented access to their world, a teeming shadow country of crazed prophets, high drama and dark secrets, where some feel at home and others are desperate to leave. He lives with a community that inhabits a giant rock on the Moab desert. Meets a prophet who works at Wal-Mart and converses with beings from other planets. He finds disturbing evidence on his travels, of forced marriage, incest and physical abuse, and as he digs, the intrigue draws him in – a former child-bride wants help in escaping; strange packages arrive in the post; there are mystery calls in the night. But Bhattacharya also finds warmth and humanity in the fundamentalist diaspora, moving into one community for weeks, holding dinner parties and discovering a Bollywood fan club for kids.”